Foundational Steps for an Assisted Living Business: The 5 Phases That Make It Work

Transcript

00:00:00
Hey friend, have you been trying to figure out how to start an assisted living business, but you are not sure how to do it? In today's video, I'm going to teach you the five foundational things you need to know so you can start and launch your own successful and profitable assisted living business. So, if you're interested in that, make sure you stick around for today's video. Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living Investing. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs

00:00:29
launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. Super excited to be here with you today. Again, we are talking today about the the entire process that you need to follow to help you launch your own assisted living business to be something that is successful and profitable. It's a five-phase process that I want to teach you. Before we dive into that though, I want to remind you I've got uh what I call the roadmap challenge. It is it's a live coaching challenge. I would

00:00:56
love to have you there. I'll tell you a little bit more about it at the end of the video, so make sure you stick around. But if you want to learn more and you want to work with me in our challenge directly with me live, go to roadmapchallenge.com. Would love to see you there. Also, make sure you go over to the ALI book to get access to the profitable assisted living facility. It's my book that I have on Amazon. It's a bestseller in multiple categories on Amazon. Would love to have you take that

00:01:20
book and use it to help you launch your assisted living business. is actually going to take what I'm telling you about today and kind of put it into actionable steps. It takes everything in my mind, puts it into a book, and can help you launch your assisted living business. And if you need help just figuring out the financing, go over to assistedlivinginvesting.net. Go grab the free underwriting calculator. You can't miss it. Big blue box right there. It says grab your free underwriting calculator. Go grab that.

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Or if you need some help, go take the quiz as well. It's a 30 secondond quiz that can help you out in launching your assisted living business. aliquiz.com. I know it's a few things for you to do, but I just want to make sure I'm meeting you where you're at uh based off of where you're at. If if you can't choose, can't decide, do the roadmap challenge, though, like it is. It's coaching with me directly. I would love to have you there. Again, roadmapchallenge.com. All

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right, let's get into it. So, the thing that I want to teach you about today is the foundational steps for an assisted living business. These are the five phases that you should be considering as you're trying to get started and launch your assisted living business. And I put this into a framework to make this really easy to follow. I call it the focus framework. Focus is an acronym. We're going to talk through each piece of the acronym today, but I'm going to give it to you really quick here so you

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know what it is. Foundation first, optimal property selection, capital and funding, understanding the rules and regulations, and having a strategic launch. All right, so I really I want to hone in on this, but before I get into it, I wanted to share with you something that I call the focus clarity quadrant. I think it's the thing that uh can really this this is going to resonate with you. And if it does, type in quadrant down below or probably more importantly, type in the word for the quadrant you're in right now. Okay. So,

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what I want you to visualize, we'll try to put this up on the screen for you. Um, you've got your your yaxis right here. This is clarity. Okay? Clarity on the process. You need clarity, right? The more clarity you have, the better off you're going to be. Your x-axis is going to be confidence. You need confidence. You need to feel like, "Yeah, I can do this." Right? That's why you're watching this video. I'm going to just like rile you up. You're you're ready to go. Let's go. let's get this

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done. You need confidence. You need clarity. You need confidence. When you don't have those, down here in the bottom left quadrant, you're in what I call the overwhelmed zone. So, if you're overwhelmed right now, type in overwhelmed down below because there's so many of you that that feel this way. And and it feels overwhelming to just be like, I don't I don't even know how to get started. Funding, I don't know. Licensing, I don't know. Like, where are you stuck at? comment that down below as

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well because it's helpful for me to know where you're stuck at so I can really kind of design things and and content for you that can help you out in launching your assisted living business. But there's so many of you who lack the clarity and lack the confidence and you just feel overwhelmed. I don't know where how I'm I'm going to get this. Now, some of you are going to lean into clarity and be like, you know what, the best thing for me to do is I'm going to just research. I'm going to I'm

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going to watch all the YouTube videos. I'm going to go find my state statutes. I'm going to read through the 300 pages of regulation. I'm going to do all of this stuff. I'm going to get clarity. And when you do that, you get stuck in what I call the research zone. You have analysis paralysis. You you're getting so much clarity. You understand the process, but with that comes this doubt like, "Oh my gosh, this is overwhelming. There's so much stuff here for me to do." So, if if you're in the research

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zone, type in research down below because I know a lot of you can can get there and and just feel like super overwhelmed. Now, on on the flip side of that, some of you are watching my video and you're like, "Yeah, let's do this." You know, you're you're all riled up. You got the confidence. You got all the confidence in the world. You just have no idea what you're doing. So, if that's you, you're in the hustle zone. So, type in hustle down below. And like I got to

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be honest, when I was first getting started, I was I started out in the hustle zone. I was like, I'm going to do this. I have actually a thing. If you watch some of my old YouTube videos, you you've probably seen this. It's this little block. I think I got it at Hobby Lobby actually. And it says, "Dreams demand hustle." And that was like my motto. I'm going to work harder than anybody else. And I'm going to make this be successful. And you know, I maybe I'll make some mistakes along the way,

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but I'm going to do it. Gosh darn it. And and I'm going to get through it. So, if you're in the hustle zone, type in hustle down below because like I I feel you. I I've been there myself before. I've just I'm going to do it. I don't know how, but it's it's going to get done. And I still have that plaque that that dreams, demands, hustle thing. Um, but I I use it and I I still actually have it up. But for me, me mentally, I had something shift in my mind a couple

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years ago and I've realized that hustle isn't what's going to get you there. As successful as you can be, you're going to make mistakes as you go along the path. And what I teach you now is you need clarity and confidence. You need both of those. You need to hustle, but you also need to research. And when you get that, you're up here in this top right corner of the quadrant and what I call the focus quadrant. And I call it that because you have clarity, you have confidence, you have a path, you have a

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framework, which is what we're talking about today to help you launch your assisted living business, right? Okay. So, if you're like, I'm in the focus quadrant right now. I'm actually there right now. Then cool. like type it in below cuz I would love like congrats. Kudos to you. But I would say 90 90 95% of the people watching this are in one of the other three quadrants. You're either you're overwhelmed, you're in the research zone, or you're in the hustle zone and you're stuck there and you

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can't get unstuck. So this video where I talk about the focus framework is going to help you shift get maybe get a little more clarity, maybe get a little more confidence because you know the path that you're supposed to be going down. So let's talk about it. The first phase here in the focus framework is your foundation first. You have got to build your foundation first. It is the most important thing. You could spend all the time in the world working trying to find lenders, understanding the entire

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process of licensing, whatever it is. You could spend hours and hours looking at properties, doing everything that you think you should be doing. But ultimately, if you don't have a foundation and you don't do the market research and you don't build a business plan and you don't do your underwriting, which go to assisted living investing.net, grab your free underwriting calculator, you can do all of those things, but if you don't you haven't done those those foundational

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pieces first, it's not going to matter. You're not going to be successful. You you might luck into getting a lender to work with you. You might fumble your way through getting a license, but you're not going to be that successful. You need to build a foundation first. So, the things that you need to do when building your foundation, again, business plan, go to assisted livinginvesting.net/bp checklist. I got a business plan checklist for you. You need to do your underwriting. Go to assistedlivinginvesting.net.

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Grab your free underwriting calculator. You need to do market research. Come join me in my launch accelerator program. Assisted livinginvesting.net/launch. It is a year-long program that you can work with me directly. And I have my market research guide in there where I do the market research for you. like 90% of it I do it for you and I update it annually. So go check that out. You need to do your market research. And then you need to set up an entity. And I will say a lot of you that I that I hear from,

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you go and create an entity. And I call it fake progress. And I'm I'm not trying to like be mean to you. I'm just like being real. You need to have an entity. I strongly suggest that you have one. I'm not an attorney. Don't take this as legal advice, but I highly suggest you create an entity. But you that shouldn't be the first thing that you do. You might just be spending a few hundred dollars to create an entity for something you're never actually going to do. And I know in the mind of some

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people, it's like, well, I'm going to do it and that's going to be my forcing function to help me get to where I've launched an assisted living business. And if that's what works for you, then great. You should have one. But you're going to be far better served to be working on your business plan, your underwriting, and your market research way before you start working on getting your entity set up. Okay? But it is still a part of building your foundation. The next phase is called optimal

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property selection. This is where you are looking for the property. This is where it starts to like feel real, right? It's like, cool. I'm starting to look at houses. But also, I I get it. Like there's so many of you that you're just like, I don't even know where should I look. What does this process look like? And there are four paths that you can go through to finding a property. One is you can rent and rehab a house. So, you pay somebody else. you're renting a home. You don't own the

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real estate, but you could do this. My friend Serge Leescue, this is how he got started. Um, so you can definitely do that. You can buy a home and you can convert it. I just had one of my students, this is the process she went through. She just finished her fire inspection, which we'll talk about that here in just a couple seconds, but she just finished the fire expens inspection so she could finish the renovations on the house so she can get her license, which is really exciting for her. Like a

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huge, huge milestone. But that's an option. You can buy a home and convert it. You can buy an existing facility. I when I was getting started, this is how I got my two facilities. I didn't even think this was a thing. I was talking to a mentor of mine and he brought it up in a call. He's like, well, why don't you just buy existing facilities? And I was like, you can do that? How where do I look? I don't know. So, I was sitting at the parking lot of my chiropractor one day and I just had some extra time. I

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got there early for whatever reason. And I'm just sitting there and so I Googled it. How did you know assisted living facilities for sale? I don't know what I was looking for. And loopnet.com pops up and loopnet for those that don't know. Type in loopnet down below by the way if you want a video on loopnet. But loopnet is a spot where you can find like commercial properties and you can see like what's for sale businesses people are selling. So I did that and I was like, "Oh, I can filter down to like

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healthcare. I can filter down to like long-term care, assisted living, nursing home type stuff." Oh man, this there are listings here that are specific to what I want to buy. The the guy I was talking to, he was right. I can do this. So I started looking and I like flipping through and I accidentally click this thing says contact me and my phone starts ringing and I was like oh crap. Hey, I'm the you got an assisted living facility. It's for sale. Like this. I had no idea what I was talking about.

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Like that was not me like speaking poorly in the microphone. That was me trying to show you exactly how I was talking. I was so nervous. Why is my phone calling this guy? I don't know what questions to ask. Ultimately, he's like, "Yeah, I'll send you an NDA. Just sign it and then I'll send you over the documents. We can look through it and and chat about it." I was like, "Okay, sounds good." Hung up the phone and then I was like, "Google, what is an NDA?"

00:11:53
Uh, because I had no idea. It's a non-disclosure agreement, by the way. It just means that I'm going to be able to look at this information. and I can share it with my partners, with my core group of people, but I can't like post it on Facebook or something like that. Uh, this is for internal use only basically, right? But I was like terrified. Did I just agree to like sign my house up for collateral? Am I like under contract? Like what am I doing here with this thing now? And and he

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luckily I was I was able to navigate that. But you can buy existing facilities. The fourth path is to buy land and build something from the ground up, which can take longer. there's more risk involved, but you can get something that is perfect for you. And it's it's actually really fun cool thing. My I have a buddy of mine who I've done some coaching with that is doing this in Idaho right now. And it's really fun to see what he's working on building. So these are the four paths that you can

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get into and when you decide which path you want to go down and I teach you actually in depth which of those is going to be the best one for you in the road mapap challenge. So go check it out roadmapchallenge.com. We go through the four pathways and help you decide which of those pathways is going to be best for you. But once you figure that out, you also have to figure out zoning. You got to figure out the fire department, the fire inspection, the fire department's going to come. They're

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going to give you what's called a certificate of occupancy. So if you've ever gone to like a fast food restaurant and they see that big plaque there that says maximum occupancy 59 people or whatever number it says, that's that was because the fire department came in and they did their evaluation. They said you can have x amount of people here in this building. and they do something very similar to that for assisted living, but they're also going to see what types of renovations you might need to do on your

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home. Gives you a punch list. They don't call it that, but it essentially is a renovation punch list of the things you need to do so you can get your license for your facility. This is a requirement, so you got to do it. Um, it's going to help you out quite a bit. Okay, C in the focus framework is capital and funding. This is where you start to understand there's funding options out there. There's a lot of them when you are trying to get funding. This is where the time that you spent

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building your foundation becomes just absolutely crucial because they will ask for your business plan. They will ask for your underwriting. They want and need to see those things as a part of the approval process. And whether you're working with an SBA lender, you're working with conventional mortgage, you're working with a hard money lender, you're finding a partner that you want to have invest with you, they want to see these things. They want to see that you've thought through this, that you

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can demonstrate that it's going to be profitable. you can give that to them. So you got to spend time doing this is absolutely crucial. It's why it's the first phase in what you're doing here. It's why you build your foundation first and it's in the name. Build the foundation first. You have to do it. And that is big time with business plan and underwriting. Again, assisted livinginvesting.net/bp checklist. Get your free business plan checklist or and assisted livinginvesting.net. Go grab your free

00:14:39
underwriting calculator. And if you need help with these things, take the quiz at aliquiz.com so I can help you out with it. Okay. Now, with that, I also know that so many of you have these concerns about funding and it's just I don't know how to get funding. Funding is impossible. Everybody tells me no. I don't know how to do it. I teach in the road map challenge the cash compass. And this is teaching you some of the different ways that you can get funding in a very simple framework that makes it

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very all the like I'm going to share with you inside the challenge like five or six stories of how people have done this in different ways how they have received funding and there's like I I've went the SBA route. It worked really well for me but it doesn't work for everybody else. There's so many different options out there. I've also done grant funding. Like there's just so many options out there. And so I want to explain to you and help you see and help this thing

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click in your mind, give you some clarity and confidence, get you in that focus zone when it comes to funding. And we do that in the roadmap challenge. So go check it out, roadmapchallenge.com. But in there, I'm going to help you understand the cash compass that there are so many different ways for you to get funding. And it, yeah, can feel overwhelming, but also it is far more possible than you think it is. So go check it out. Would love to have you in there. But capital and funding is huge.

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You got to have funds to do this. Whether you're just using the funds yourself or you're getting a loan with somebody else, you're going to need funds. And so I want to make sure that you understand exactly how to do that. Now, the U in the focus framework is understanding rules and regulations. This is the third thing that people tell me they don't know how to do. I don't know how to get started. I don't know how to do funding and licensing. Like every time I hear about it, eyes glaze

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over. I I I just I I plug my ears. I can't I can't handle it. Right. So, I've worked in the healthcare industry since 2015. I think I have over a decade of experience in the healthcare industry. I I have a masters in healthcare administration. This piece of it, it is confusing. It can be overwhelming, but also it's very doable. My dad, who's my business partner, by the way, comes from the construction industry, works for a large electrical contractor, and has had no experience with healthcare. And now

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he probably knows more about our Medicaid process than I do, specifically in the states where we operate because that's something that he has been able to learn. And so you can learn these things. They're not that hard to learn. There's just a lot of them. They can feel confusing. So I I acknowledge that it can be hard, but also it's not as hard as you think it is. Okay? So it feels overwhelming, but you can do it. The the hardest part, I got to be honest, is probably finding the actual

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department that does assisted living licensing in your state because it's not, oh, every state is the department of health or health and human services or, you know, some agency. It depends on the state and what they do. and trying to find the specific agency and department in the state that does assisted living. And finding the right contact there is like 90% of the battle because once you find that person or find that agency, they will have the application you need to fill out and it is pretty straightforward. The thing

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that is going to take you the longest when you are working through your licensing application is your policies and procedures. You're going to need to have these. It's a requirement. You can build these yourself. And in my launch accelerator program, I give you a copy of my existing policies and procedures for my Idaho facility and you can take that and customize it for you. If you would like, go to assistedlivinginvesting.net/launch to learn more about that program. But you could also pay somebody to do this

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for you. $1,500 $2,500. In my mind, I think it's worth it because I know how long it takes to write your own. But now also you have AI. You can use that a little bit. You know, it's a little bit simpler. you can decide how to do it, but that is the thing that's going to take the longest, but also it's not super hard. It's just very very time consuming to get that done and then if you want, you can become Medicaid certified as well. So, I I teach Medicaid. If you're interested

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in learning about Medicaid, type Medicaid in down below. I'll do a video for you on that. But, you don't have to be Medicaid. You can just do private pay if you want. Um, Medicaid, it's a I give you a quick overview. It's a a government program. It is fedally funded but state administered. Funds come from the federal government. They go down to the state. The state determines how they're going to use those funds. They use it for oftent times things like food stamp programs or CHIP. They'll use it

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for things like elderly care, people that have disabilities, you know, those types of things. There's different ways for you to qualify for Medicaid. Assisted living is one of the benefits that those recipients can have. And then you just have to become a Medicaid certified provider so that you can provide these services to Medicaid residents and then get reimbured for it. Okay, that's Medicaid in a nutshell. So, you can do that, but you don't have to. If you don't want to, you can just work

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with private pay residents. Totally fine. Totally up to you. It's the cool thing about assisted living. You're not tied into it. So, you can add a little more regulation. I think Medicaid is the best kept secret in assisted living. I think it is a great way for you to be profitable, but not everybody wants to deal with it. and everybody else's experiences vary. So you can or if you don't want to, you don't have to. And the S of the focus framework, this is the part that I I just I'm having a

00:20:05
student that is shifting into this phase right now. And this for me as a coach is really exciting because you go from this this place of like scarcity and just confusion and I can't figure out funding and I can't do the licensing is all confusing and I just I feel overwhelmed. You're in the overwhelm zone, right? You're in the research zone. you're just kind of stuck in these places to all of a sudden you shift and you get into the focus zone and everything clicks and now you have your facility license and then

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it restarts for you and all of a sudden your questions are moving from how do I talk to a lender? How do I fill out this application? How do I get this information? How do I fill out my business plan to much more detailed questions like what's my payroll vendor? How how do I do all of these things? How do I track the cares that we provide to our residents? and your your questions shift and all the things that you thought were hard are it's like that was easy. Now I got to actually run a business and this is

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hard. This is like really hard. Um and and so that's that's where I want you to get because it's it's super exciting to shift from oh god I can't figure all this stuff out to I figured all that out now I got a whole another set of problems but you're running a business and it's super rewarding and and profitable and can help you out. So in the strategic launch phase, you're, you know, you wake up one day, you've got a business, you've got to do staffing, you

00:21:24
got to do marketing, you got to do financial management, you got to do these core pieces of running a business, but it's also super exciting. So when you are trying to follow this process, when you're trying to get started and you're just like feeling stuck and you're feeling overwhelmed, it's often like there's this analogy that I have that I want to share with you. So, um, have have you ever gone sledding. Have you ever like I live in Utah, so sledding is something I used to do all

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the time, right? And when you're going sledding or tubing, the first time you go down the hill, it's like fresh powder. It's it's crunchy snow, whatever it is. And it's it's hard to go down. Even though you're on a hill, you're just like you have to scoot a lot and you you don't have a track to go down. It's really really slow. It's hard to go down. It's not very fun the first time you go down. It's just not like you go 10 ft and then you stop and you're like,

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"Ah, that wasn't that wasn't great." Climb back to the top of the mountain and and do it again and then you go maybe 20 ft. But the the more you do it, the more you follow this process, all of a sudden you're going instead of 10 ft 20 feet, you're going hundreds of feet down this mountain and you got to climb all the way back up. But that's a different story. The more that you do this, you you get to go down and you go smoother, you go faster, and that is the clarity and confidence that you get when

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you follow a process like the focus framework. So, you should be getting a guide. I would love to be that guide, but they are going to help you skip on the mistakes that they make that that you will make when you get started because they've already made them. They are there to kind of help you just kind of get those things out of the way. They're there to build the the the snow sled trail for you. So, you just get to have fun with it and and you get to go off the fun jumps and and know exactly

00:23:11
what you're getting into. They're here to take that focus clarity quadrant that you have and take out the overwhelm and take out the hustle and take out the research piece of it. You're still going to have to do those things, but simplify it and get you in this focus zone up here, right? That's what they are there for. That's what I do inside of my coaching programs. Go take out go take the quiz, aliquiz.com. It's 30 seconds. will tell you which of my programs is the best fit for you and gives me a

00:23:35
little bit of background on who you are and what you're looking for to help you launch your assisted living business. Or go take the roadmap challenge. Go come join us roadmapchallenge.com. I would love to have you there because when you do this, it helps you create a plan, helps you have a process, gets you into the focus zone, and helps you be successful. So that's what I want to help you do. Follow the focus framework. follow all of these processes and then find a guide. You you are the person

00:24:06
that you know when I'm the guide, it's cool for me to see you succeed, but I don't get a cut of your money or anything like that. You're like the hero of this story, right? I'm just here to help you reach your goals. I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi, as weird as that sounds. You're Luke Skywalker, to use a Star Wars reference. uh you're the person that has to go through this journey and I'm here to guide you and help you out and help you make the correct decisions and not falter and know where you can and can't

00:24:35
go so you don't waste your time and you don't lose a bunch of money. Um that's what I do inside of my coaching programs. If you're interested in learning more about that, just type in me down below. I'll make sure I get you the the link to the quiz. You go take it aliquiz.com. But if you like this video, you found it helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out content like this. We go live on Tuesdays and put out content on

00:24:56
Thursdays. I also I mentioned this at the start and several times throughout the video. I would love to have you in our next roadmap challenge. It is a live coaching experience. This is not pre-recorded. This is not just like some little webinar or anything like this. This is us working in a room together for hours. You have a workbook. There's homework. You got to do the work. You're going to have like light bulbs going off. It is impactful and it is like just transformational. I would love to have

00:25:23
you in there. So, come join me roadmapchallenge.com for our next one. We I do them regularly. I would love to see you in the next one. roadmapchallenge.com. And if you can't do that for just you can't commit the time, you can't commit the money, something along and it's super affordable by the way. But if you can't do those things, go to the alibook.com, get the profitable assisted living facility book. It will help you out. It takes everything in my brain and and puts it out there. By the way, as of the

00:25:50
recording of this video, I am doing the audio recording for the book. And it is like I'm just reading through it. I'm like, man, I got some good stuff in here. So, go get the book. It's going to help you out as you're trying to launch your assisted living business. I really will. And and I I want you to be successful. You need a guide. I would love to be that person for you in some capacity. So, come join me aliquiz.com. Figure out which of my programs is going to be the best fit for you. And if it's

00:26:13
now's not the time, let's do it in a couple of months, you know, when you're ready. Come join me. I would love to help you out as you're trying to launch your assisted living business. So, are you curious about assisted living, but you're not sure how to get started? At Assisted Living Investing, I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I love coaching people. It is one of my

00:26:35
favorite things to do. I would love to do that for you. Go check out roadmapchallenge.com. I'd love to see you in there. And with that, thanks for watching and remember, it doesn't take a lot, just a little bit. Just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do and you are consistent and persistent, you are going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day.